It took a week for Athena to become Beth, for her to really get used to her new self, to accept her new family, her new life, and for her to have the revelation that this was who she was now. It took another month for her to fully understand what that meant, for her to really get what it means to be a McMillian and start acting like it, and it was a full year before anything strange happened again.
A lot can change in a year, and some things did, Athena finally gave up trying to be called Athena, giving into her new name of Beth. This helped in a way, it allowed her to feel like she wasn't lying when she said her name, it furthered the lie that she was this new girl just far enough that the lie became true enough to live with. She grew her hair out, spent a summer in California, because that was what the family did, and got used to having a maid clean up after her, got used to being asked out every few weeks, got used to saying no, got used to saying yes and finally got used to a completely new social life.
And yes, she even had gotten used to Sarah and her mother constantly pushing her to be more girly, more like them. It was fairly easy to ignore, because she wasn't like them. She was the black sheep of the family, dark haired, dark eyed, less fancy, more independent and most certainly separate from them, and every time they would invite her to a spa day, or to the hair dressers, or to go shopping she would take it as a cue and a reminder to be herself, and she would write, and she would make her own dresses, and she would draw, and she would go for walks and read and remember a girl named Athena, who once could have existed, but didn't anymore.
One year later things were mostly the same, until on a normal walk, she bumped into a girl, whose name was Athena. and everything started to change again.
